Adrift And Lost Are The Restless Souls
by feathered moon wings
Summary: Amid the waves, drifting without direction and lost to everyone, even themselves, floats a plank of putrid wood that caries two ghostly figures. They used to be a man and a woman, in another life they were a king and a queen. Now they know not who they are or who they used to be; they are trapped in the past and so they shall remain forevermore.
1. Only The Dead

The waves are dark and tall, raging monsters without faces that roam the surface of the sea just to crash down and dissolve into nothingness. It's _cold_, cold enough to take away the life of any who dare to enter its waters.

The Dark Sea is as it's name wills it, nothing but a land of terrible happenings and creatures of myth. They hide in it and thrive in its endless night, for no day will show it's face past the thick rain clouds that are ever permanent here. No gentleness can cross the thunder that lingers after it has long since passed. It is no man's land, and no men who have a hold of their bearings sail its dangers.

Amid the waves, drifting without direction and lost to everyone, even themselves, floats a plank of putrid wood that caries two ghostly figures. Their skin is blue like the dead, their eyes are far away and linger in times long gone, times that had filled them with despair and terror, of a ship that sailed where no ship ought to sail.

These ghostly figures used to be a man and a woman, in another life -when there was life to be had- they were a king and a queen. Now they know not who they are or who they used to be; there is only endless waves of dark frigid water that is the only thing they can feel.

Wisps of nothing, blue and translucent, like tinted glass they exist as barely more than a cloud of mist. Who they used to be matters not to them. They only know the Dark Sea, and a terrible thing that happened years and years ago.

The waves are dark and tall. In the never ending waters of this sea no one but creatures of myth and those who are dead can ever hope to inhabit it. And even then specters can hardly be expected to live when they are dead themselves.

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**Next chapter: Here comes the angst train choo choo mutherfukerssss.**


	2. Dreadful Truths

Elsa never knew she had an adventurous soul until so much later in her life, she had never even suspected such a thing from herself. That trait she'd always attributed to Anna who, though willing to venture into the unknown, was not actually a fan of doing so when she could very well do it in the town she loved so much.

But Elsa? To discover that adventure actually called to her and ran through her veins? It was an incredible feeling she didn't know she yearned for. She felt like the heroes in her parent's stories, brave knights who fought dragons and women who traded their skin for those of animals. She liked the _thrill_ of exploring new and different things, it made her feel a part of this wild word that she lived in.

Most of all though, she loved exploring the Dark Sea that had battled with her in their first encounter. Atop Nokk she rode the waves and intended to look at every bit of surface of it's waters. Already, she had found three deserted islands lost between the towering waves, and Atohallan was an endless maze of exploration in of itself. There was so much more left to discover and she couldn't wait to find it.

"Is that enough for today?" She asked Nokk. The Dark Sea was losing what little light it had with the approaching end of the day. "Or should we go a few miles more before we return?"

The horse trembled with excitement at the prospect, if it were up to him they would never stop roaming his home's dangers.

"Of course _you're_ not going to complain." She huffed with a smile.

The water creature bumped his head back to make contact with her chest. Elsa laughed pleasantly and patted the side of his thick flowing neck.

"Let's go then." And so they galloped on, swift and powerful enough to challenge the waves themselves. They went up the liquid mountains and down with the currents, splashing as they crashed down and merged with one another.

Elsa didn't expect to find anything more than water if she was honest, the extra miles where more of a last taste of freedom before returning to a mostly domestic life, but much to her surprise she did find something unusual in the distance. As she observed it, Elsa thought it couldn't be an island, but she had no idea what _else_ it could be.

But also… it called to her in a way, that shape in the distance that bobbed up and down amid the water…

"Take me there," she ordered Nokk and the horse complied.

The shape in the distance turned into two, and as she came closer the figures took on a human form even in their bluish and transparent tint.

Elsa inhaled a shaky breath.

Abruptly, she pulled at Nokk's reins. It was such a hard motion it almost threw her off her perch, but she held onto the horse's neck by sheer reflex. When she lifted her head to the figures and gazed through the strands of her hair, her face lost what little color it had.

Elsa looked like she had seen a ghost. She was not wrong.

Shakily, she dismounted, freezing the water below her feet and holding onto Nokk so she wouldn't lose her balance in the rowdy waves. But the waters around them quieted, like a bubble of relative peace had settled. Maybe she was doing it, she didn't know; so many of her powers she still didn't understand and they always seemed to surprise her with _something_ new or different she'd not been aware of.

Elsa wasn't thinking about her powers right now, all of her concentration was absorbed by a single focal point. She took a step forward.

"Mother?" She exhaled "Father?"

Standing weightless on a rotten and damaged plank of wood, stood like a vision from her past, her parents, wispy blue and their gaze all but absent to the present.

This could not be. Despite all the wonders she had encountered. This Could. Not. Be. This was not reality, it was a nightmare brought to flesh, a travesty made just to mock the years she had suffered their absence. _Her parents_.

She crept closer until she was just a step away from them.

Their faces were emotionless and their bodies lax, like puppets waiting to be brought to life. It was jarring and terrifying. Elsa's heart fluttered in her chest like a frightened rabbit.

"Mama…" She raised her white hand towards the woman's face. She was now an inch taller than her mother had been.

Elsa choked back a sob when her fingers went through the ghostly figure and dusted away the edge of her face. For a moment she was terrified she had broken the spell that kept them tied to this world or ruined their fragile habitation. But she needn't worry, a moment later, the mist that was the right side of her distorted face came back to itself until her mother's beautiful features were once again made whole.

She took a step back and stared. And stared. And stared.

She stared for a long while, until it became evident the water on her face wasn't the ocean breeze. She brushed away her tears and stared again. No matter how many times she tried intercepting their eyes it was futile, their orbs were absent, long gone somewhere she couldn't reach.

She grieved for them. How long had they been trapped in the Dark Sea? How long had their souls been tied to the site of their deaths? It was like finding the wreckage of their ship all over again only ten times worse.

If it weren't for their transparent-like quality, they would've looked like corpses to her, pallid and waxed skin devoid of any life. Left to drift at sea just like the shattered wood from the wreckage. Their bodies… they were probably sunk deep beneath the waves, lost to the depths and forever shrouded in darkness.

Another tear slid down her cheek and she closed her eyes. Her arms raised without her permission and held her middle to find what little comfort she could in this empty place where nothing could survive. She had found it so beautiful in its untempered wildness, a natural happening to behold. Now she was not so sure, it seemed more sinister than it ever had. Even more than it had been when she'd first encountered Nokk.

Suddenly she missed her sister, her comforting presence and fiery will. There was a difference between the cold being of little importance to her and yearning for the warmth of someone that loved her. She missed her family, Anna, Kristoff, Olaf and even Sven.

She missed her parents even though, suddenly, by the wicked mysteries of this earth, she had them right in front of her.

When she opened her eyes her heart fluttered. The hands of her phantom parents, blue and wispy and limp as they were, ever so slightly reached for one another, even in absence of self as they existed right now. Their index fingers barely brushed one another in an almost hold, just about to intertwine.

Even in death they could not be parted.

Elsa looked up at their faces again, late King and Queen, Agnarr and Iduna. Her Arendellian father and Northuldra mother. She lifted her left hand and let it hover over her father's cheek, she didn't want it dissolved and deformed as she had done to her mother's. She was careful and couldn't take her eyes of him.

The tips of her fingers descended just slightly, just so touching the surface of his ghostly skin. A spidery trail of ice crept from that contact over Agnarr's left side of his face. Elsa gasped in momentary mortification, worried she had done something wrong again.

Just as she was about to retract her hand, the empty gaze of her father filled with… something. She stayed very still. Though nothing more than ice, beneath her hand there was something solid now instead of misty nothingness. Slowly his eyes shifted until he found her, blue eyes that used to be green in life found her own and she became breathless.

His gaze was quietly confused, but… there was the hint of faint recognition. It lasted just a second, enough to make her heart stop. But the spell broke and the tendrils of ice retracted from Agnarr's cheek until his gaze was once again lost to the events of years long passed.

Elsa let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, astounded and incredulous. She couldn't think, couldn't process the heaviness of the situation; how these ghosts were here, what her powers had just done. Whatever that was she didn't understand but she wanted to do it _again_, she wanted her father and mother _looking at_ _her_.

Once more, she raised her hands and concentrated, letting instinct do as it willed. She hovered her hands beside their faces and poured herself into the action, waiting for the tendrils of ice to cover their ghostly mirages.

But that's not what happened.

In a sudden moment of connection, with Nokk at her back, his snout against her shoulder, and her parents before her… something clicked.

When Elsa opened her eyes the scenery had changed, her parents and Nokk nowhere to be found. In her confusion she took a moment to understand the desperate shouts that reached her ears from somewhere close, but muffled. A storm raged around her, furious rain bombarding everything from the sky, and just before her, that _dreadful_ ship.

The crew members hurried from one end of the ship to the other in a desperate attempt to control the vessel as it tumbled amid the waves of the raging Dark Sea.

No, no, _no_, _no_, _**no**_.

She didn't want to be here; she didn't want to see even a glimpse of this again. The wreckage had been more than enough to tear her down, she didn't need to witness her parents' demise as it had happened.

She saw a figure running on the deck, a mop of golden hair as it raced to reach the captain.

"Father," she whimpered. Another figure caught her attention, distinguishable amongst the others for being the only one wearing a dress.

She shook her head in distress… mother.

"_There!_" She saw Iduna shout at her father and point at the water.

Elsa's heart fell.

She heard a familiar neigh and the thunderous gallop of the water horse. Nokk.

"_No_." She breathed out in devastation "_No, stop!_" Elsa screamed. But this was not the present, and there was nothing that would ever be changed about what had transpired here.

Before her eyes, she saw her trusted companion smash against the hull of the ship, throwing everyone off valance. The collision made her mother slid down the deck with the and her father slip a few stairs as he'd tried to head to his wife.

A catastrophe unfolded before her as the spirit prepared to crash again the wood. A looming wave was building somewhere close.

"I don't want to be here," Elsa whispered, she knew the outcome of this and she _would not_ be made a whiteness. "Stop!" her hands covered her face in desperation. "Stop this, stop this, _stop this. Just __**stop**_."

Like being hit on the chest, Elsa gasped, thrown back to her own body. She let go of her parents' faces and slipped from her thin ice platform. Swimming back up and taking a big gulp of air, she was filled with fear.

Nokk approached her, a concerned look on his face and eyes at her reaction.

"No!" She threw a burst of shakily made ice at the horse and tried to push back.

The water spirit stopped, confused at her reaction towards him.

This _creature_ had been an agent of her parents' demise. And she… she _trusted_ Nokk, she considered him a friend. She had forgotten, or not really, but decided to be oblivious of their first encounter. But now he was the only thing she could think about. He had tried to _drown_ her.

The emotions were rising in her chest and the turmoil of so many revelations in so little time was pressing on her chest a tremendous weight.

Elsa began crying.

Nokk approached again, worried for his sibling spirit.

"Go away!" She shouted, unable to see with her eyes full of tears and salty water. "_Leave me_!" she wailed.

But the horse did not and could not leave Elsa, they were tied now, in a way that all natural things were tied. Nokk could feel her bone deep exhaustion and if he left her as she demanded, she may very well join the specters in their drifting non-life.

His decision made, the water spirit bit harmlessly on Elsa's hand and pulled.

"_No!_" Elsa let out a sob.

Nokk didn't care. With tendrils of water, he wrapped her securely to his back and began to trail back to where Elsa would be safe.

"Wait no-" she struggled to open her eyes, and through her tears saw the still, pale figures of the late King and Queen. "I… I can't _leave_ them."

The horse didn't stop.

Resigned and heartbroken, Elsa closed her eyes and let Nokk carry her where he would, she had no energy left to do much more than that.

She watched the raging sea return to it's tempestuous self, waves growing bigger and bigger where a small heaven had parted for them. The hour was late, she couldn't find it in herself to find any beauty in the angry sea that passed them by.


End file.
